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 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Andrew1975 wrote:
How come we don't see more Daemons in HH armies? Clearly there were daemon hosts in the lore. Daemons would be a great addition to LI, but even in the HH game they don't play much or a role.

In 2.0 at least, it's because the main rules aren't out, and for what we have, while they're a solid beatstick, they don't bring all that much to marines unless you're word bearers who can allow mutliple chars to summon. Militia will use them occasionally, but only one in place of ogryn.

Thats too bad, Chaos Daemons were great units in 2nd ed Space Marine. It hard to imagine HH without loads of Daemons.

twentypence wrote:
Just confirmed that there is no LI content in WD 491.

It was a slim hope anyway.

What if that’s why they delayed it? Like they somehow forgot to add the LI article(s) so they pushed it back to line up with the issue that does have it.

WD has barely been involved with cutting edge releases for some time now, that stuff is all online. These days White Dwarf is more used to provide inspiration and content for games & models that are already available.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
How come we don't see more Daemons in HH armies? Clearly there were daemon hosts in the lore. Daemons would be a great addition to LI, but even in the HH game they don't play much or a role.

My guess is GW want to limit the number of their games that one model range can be used in. Same reason that Daemons of Chaos will have a very limited appearance in the new WFB game.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

twentypence wrote:
Just confirmed that there is no LI content in WD 491.

It was a slim hope anyway.

What if that’s why they delayed it? Like they somehow forgot to add the LI article(s) so they pushed it back to line up with the issue that does have it.

First WD rarely has new stuff to avoid leaks anyway.

AT once point WD(coming mid month) had contents for last half of previous month and first half of that month. This way WD didn't show releases that werent announced yet.

Not sure is system still same but if so anything that would be revealed after about this week would be off limit from WD anyway.

I remember that they accidentally revealed some AI Aeldari planes in WD, so they do sometimes preview things.

 stonehorse wrote:


My guess is GW want to limit the number of their games that one model range can be used in. Same reason that Daemons of Chaos will have a very limited appearance in the new WFB game.

I don't see how it makes any sense. Surely the optimal situation for the company is when it can sell the same product to the largest customer group possible (players of different games). And wargaming companies have been trying to do this for almost as long as I remember, for example pushing their new expensive kits as mercenaries playable in all factions (remember when every Warhammer Fantasy army at a tournament had a Giant?).

Cyel wrote:
I don't see how it makes any sense. Surely the optimal situation for the company is when it can sell the same product to the largest customer group possible (players of different games). And wargaming companies have been trying to do this for almost as long as I remember, for example pushing their new expensive kits as mercenaries playable in all factions (remember when every Warhammer Fantasy army at a tournament had a Giant?).

Because GW is betting that the group of players who will buy a kit because it is used in multiple games is smaller than the group of players who will buy a whole army for each game. They don't want that second group getting a discount and sharing models between their two armies, they want full army sales.

Cyel wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:


My guess is GW want to limit the number of their games that one model range can be used in. Same reason that Daemons of Chaos will have a very limited appearance in the new WFB game.

I don't see how it makes any sense. Surely the optimal situation for the company is when it can sell the same product to the largest customer group possible (players of different games). And wargaming companies have been trying to do this for almost as long as I remember, for example pushing their new expensive kits as mercenaries playable in all factions (remember when every Warhammer Fantasy army at a tournament had a Giant?).

GWs concept is built around whales, they don't care for people who buy 1 army and be done, they care only about those who buy everything on each release
and with 1 army being used in multiple games, there are less releases those people will buy

like releasing a Daemon army for 3 games is a single release for the target group to buy, while releasing 3 different armies are 3 releases the target groups buys
and GW does not care if people play the game or not

I suspect that's not the case, especially with the recent interview on the painting phase with Tom Hibbard and the "Hobby Trumpet" concept they had.

It's a focus on primarily getting new people into the hobby for the main lines, with FW previously (and the other boxed games) being a little more focused on on retaining customers by giving them something new within the GW ecosystem rather than having them drift off into another hobby, so that later the main lines will tempt them back in AoS/40K later.

I can't remember if they said it explicitly in that interview or just referred back to what timelines they had going around a few years ago, but as far as GW see things the typical customer is a customer for around 18 months.

I'm impressed that the 18 month myth is still going strong when literally everything GW does is clearly marketed 100% at whales.

Outside those B&N exclusive minigames I guess.

By “whales”, I assume you mean ‘folks with the temerity to know the depth of their own unique pocket who choose to spend their money as they please, even if it’s to your chagrin?”

Yeah?

Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
By “whales”, I assume you mean ‘folks with the temerity to know the depth of their own unique pocket who choose to spend their money as they please, even if it’s to your chagrin?”

Yeah?

Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

It's a term that is common in sales/commerce it just means like large client/big account/big spender it can be term of endearment in some contexts. Whale rolls off the tongue better than elephant or gigantic ect, i guess that's why it sticks

The excess in the hobby can certainly be seen that way, very possible to purchase more than have time to build/paint/display ect. Pile of shame is common I think even for moderate sized model puichasers/gamers.



Its been nice to see people dust off old epic stuff in the interim to and star painting it, get ahead of things to make the best of the delay in release. Lots of people posting AT/AI stuff they find stores. Also nice to think some of the stuff that saw les table time in AT might see more play in LI like some of the knights models that aren't as good in AT. Has there been any confirmation on what will be in resin other then the AI fw flyers?

Yeah, I wouldn't say 40K and AoS are aimed at "whales". There's an obvious focus on new players with those product lines.

The HH product lines on the other hand are clearly aimed at veteran players -- and some of them could be described as "whales". Good lord, the amount of expensive FW resin some folks use to walk off with at those Open Days and such...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

Seems to me like you chose to make the term derogatory and then chose to include yourself in it lol

I was commenting on GW's sales strategies, not your personal spending habits or guilt regarding them

i'm pretty sure that if GW was indeed aiming at a whale market above everything else their stores would be geared up for them,

but they're really geared up to sell (fairly forcefully) to new customers, and as of 4 or 5 years ago when i was regularly in touch with a member of staff their training (and store survival metrics) were all geared up for new players

now i'm sure they're delighted if some of the folk who stay in the hobby are open to spending the big bucks (and without them the hobby would suffer too) but they don't seem to be the main target of 40K or AoS (I think FHFB was more geared to older players, but more as a consequence of ever expanding army sizes than a deliberate descision)

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

Seems to me like you chose to make the term derogatory and then chose to include yourself in it lol

I was commenting on GW's sales strategies, not your personal spending habits or guilt regarding them

"Whale" is quite often used in a derogatory manner in some online hobby circles, most often by folks who brag about getting all of their models from prints or recasts. However "paypig" is starting to take over as the preferred term. Presumably that's because it makes the contempt much clearer.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

Seems to me like you chose to make the term derogatory and then chose to include yourself in it lol

I was commenting on GW's sales strategies, not your personal spending habits or guilt regarding them

Nice cropping out of context.

Why not try again, without convenient cropping?

Or are you really that upset by others doing *expansive gesture* whatever it is they feel fits them?

And remember, I’ve not attacked your position or pocket here. As I said, to each their own.

I would imagine the "half-life" or whatever for GW customers is about 3 years, hence the 3 year cycle they use for their major games to try to keep them on board.

Removed - rule #1

Kodos and Blackfang are known to be fierce anti GW, so just ignore their derogatory terms when they describe GW customers. In particular when they misuse them.

"Whales" is one coming from video games and it is intentionnaly negative in the community of players - especially mobile ones, when some players can spend thousands of dollars on "virtual goods". That's why the comparison doesn't stand, because with GW, not only because it's nowhere near the ridiculous amount sunk in mobile games in the same amount of time but also because with GW you at least have a physical product than you can indeed sell later at some known value. In mobile games, you gain nothing at all but the illusion of value.

Of course, there's cheaper elsewhere, but good luck selling them after a while on a market where their value is clearly not the same than GW products (to be polite and not to say "it's worth crap"). That's the difference.

As with HH...I expect it will have the same "value" than Epic models we saw on Ebay after a good while. It's not as big as the core games for sure, but it's still there...so there's that as well. Not to mention the comparison with core games will be made and that smaller scale usually means smaller box prices for the 40k equivalent.

GW. Whales. Moby Dick...

...if only the FlashGitz lads were reading this.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
By “whales”, I assume you mean ‘folks with the temerity to know the depth of their own unique pocket who choose to spend their money as they please, even if it’s to your chagrin?”

Yeah?

Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

No, we mean the people who compulsively buy because of addiction, not because they genuinely want something and can afford to buy it. "Whales" is a standard term and we will continue to use it.

Talking about the game again...even if the core set is delayed, will the Dire Wolf plastic kit see an early release since it works for AT, with the included LI base and possibly rules as a sort of preview, or will they hold it back as well?

Unlikey if its packaged for Legions and not Titanicus.

Sarouan wrote:
That's why the comparison doesn't stand, because with GW, not only because it's nowhere near the ridiculous amount sunk in mobile games in the same amount of time but also because with GW you at least have a physical product than you can indeed sell later at some known value. In mobile games, you gain nothing at all but the illusion of value.

That is a minor and irrelevant difference. Whales still exist in games like MTG, where you have obvious compulsive buying behavior by gambling addicts even though technically the cards are a physical product that can be sold. GW hasn't quite reached the level of WOTC with blind buy sales but they're definitely trying to exploit the FOMO element of whales and targeting the person who will spend $1000 on a shiny new army only to have it gather dust in a closet forever.

If you're chasing whales (as every profit-focused company should be) then avoiding overlap between products is necessary. You don't want a whale saying "I'll use my AT titan army in LI", they want the whale to see a shiny new game and buy an entire space marine army to play it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Or are you really that upset by others doing *expansive gesture* whatever it is they feel fits them?

I'm not upset over anything, but it's pretty damning that you're upset over me commenting on GW's sales strategy.

And all I've cropped is your personal definition of a term you choose to describe yourself with, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I said, meant, implied or thought

Well, we still await your own definition of the term “whale”.

I’ve offered my own, which apparently you didn’t mean. Onus is now on you my good man.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
By “whales”, I assume you mean ‘folks with the temerity to know the depth of their own unique pocket who choose to spend their money as they please, even if it’s to your chagrin?”

Yeah?

Please don’t use derogatory terms. You do you, I’ll do me, and everyone else can draw their own preferred lines.

No, we mean the people who compulsively buy because of addiction, not because they genuinely want something and can afford to buy it. "Whales" is a standard term and we will continue to use it.

You can boil it down to something even less emotive, "a customer who spends in substantial excess of average." I daresay with access to enough info you could put a number on what qualifies as a dolphin, whale, Kraken etc.

The reasons behind behaviour that deviates so far from the average are probably a lot more triggering in some cases, as I'm sure it's not exclusively explained by physical wealth or supported by an enterprise such as painting models for resale or some other activity requiring bulk purchases.

Probably best leave that for personal speculation though, lest it upsets some people and drags the topic further away from where is should be.

Sarouan wrote:
"Whales" is one coming from video games and it is intentionnaly negative in the community of players - especially mobile ones, when some players can spend thousands of dollars on "virtual goods". That's why the comparison doesn't stand, because with GW, not only because it's nowhere near the ridiculous amount sunk in mobile games in the same amount of time but also because with GW you at least have a physical product than you can indeed sell later at some known value. In mobile games, you gain nothing at all but the illusion of value.

LOL. Everything isn't a gaming term. And it has nothing to do with 'addiction' etc.

The term "whale"/"white whale"/"whale customer" has been around for years in business. They're the big customers/clients/etc who spend far more than the average one. So the business spends a lot of effort chasing and trying to land them. As in a whale hunt. It's like the 80/20 rule but more exclusive than that. Most industries have them.

Basically it's a sales and marketing term to define a real type of customer and something that no one should be getting bent out of shape about.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Talking about the game again...even if the core set is delayed, will the Dire Wolf plastic kit see an early release since it works for AT, with the included LI base and possibly rules as a sort of preview, or will they hold it back as well?

It would be a great interim small scale fix to release all the repackaged Titans and aircraft in addition to the new Dire Wolf, but I have to agree that I think it’s unlikely to happen because GW will think it’s preferable to have no stock rather than stock for an unreleased system (even with all the products doing double duty)